Sensational criminal trials are particularly enticing as areas of inspiration for writers. On the most obvious level, there is an instantly compelling dramatic event to act as anchor and characters who are under pressure and going through extreme emotions. There is also the benefit of dual narratives, each with their own attractions for a mystery-minded audience: the crime itself is a draw, while the corresponding legal trial generates a suspense of its own. Will those in the dock get away with murder? Will justice be served?

Cause Célèbre, Terence Rattigan’s last play, explores an infamous crime which took place in an outwardly respectable house in Bournemouth in 1934.

Alma Rattenbury is in her mid-30s, married to an alcoholic businessman twice her age. A notice in the newspaper calling for a boy to help around Villa Madeira is answered by George Wood, 17 years old but aggressively confident in his manner. Alma has found a chauffeur for her husband and, very quickly, a bedtime companion for herself.

It is clear (both in the play and from true-crime accounts) that Francis Rattenbury has been living a sexless marriage with Alma for years; he is more enamored of his liquor cabinet than his younger wife. Further, he says nothing about the obvious physical relationship between Alma and George, turning a blind eye to the matter and retiring to his own bedroom when not passing out in the study after too many drinks. A fit of jealousy strikes the teenage Wood when he realizes he will always be consigned to servant status, and one March night fatally batters husband “Ratz” with a mallet borrowed from his grandparent.

The trial hopes to answer the obvious and important questions: how much influence did Alma Rattenbury have over George Wood, and how involved was she in her husband’s murder? To prosecution and, likely, the play’s audience, it seems obvious at first: a woman who ensnares a teen lover and carries on so that everyone in the house knows her actions is a Sinful Soul, flying in the face of propriety and Christian morals, and deserving of the judgement society will attach. But playwright Rattigan pushes further, hinting that the power dynamics might not be so simple.

Indeed, in Cause Célèbre Terence Rattigan does what all good dramatists try to do: he uses a story – here, one about a sordid domestic murder – to say something greater about humanity, calling out and questioning conventional wisdom in the process. Alma Rattenbury’s trial shares stage space with the personal problems of Edith Davenport, a woman navigating a painful divorce and watching her own teen son, Tony, reject her as he makes disastrous choices in the name of independence. It’s an intriguing mirror image, and it is Edith, as the jury forewoman, who finds the surprising empathy to understand that women who society reflexively sees as manipulating younger men are actually being manipulated in turn.

Glynis Johns in the 1977 London premiere of Cause Célèbre by Terence Rattigan.

I found the contrast between the frankly presented subject matter of the play and the moral perspective of 1930s bourgeois society quite fascinating. Rattigan is never prurient, nor is he truly explicit the way we find true-crime sordidness today, but his script doesn’t shy away from the unavoidable elements of sexuality and power dynamics that led to murder. There is a chilling scene where desires collide as George Wood strips off his clothes to climb into Alma’s bed, only to confess to killing her husband downstairs moments before.

And in the second plotline, Tony Davenport, angry that his father is cheating on his mother and that Edith appears to accept this, sleeps with a prostitute and acquires a venereal disease. (It’s a fascinating detail that underscores the lose-lose situation for both Edith and Alma: how much responsibility can you claim when someone you love acts in a way that breaks your heart?)

Cause Célèbre is not a perfect play, but it is skillfully constructed and a fitting final bow from a British playwright who, both here and in stage stories like The Winslow Boy (1946) and The Deep Blue Sea (1952), explored the damage that (often hypocritical) public moral sentiment could inflict on flawed individuals. It is also my second entry for the Crimes of the Century review challenge, which this month focuses on 1977: Cause Célèbre débuted at Her Majesty’s Theatre in London on July 4th of that year.